by Nate Ryan, USA TODAY Sports

by Nate Ryan, USA TODAY Sports

AVONDALE, Ariz. - Denny Hamlin didn't mince words three years ago when asked to describe the driver who spun him near the end of a Nationwide Series race at Phoenix International Raceway.

"Every driver in the garage comes up to me and says, 'That guy is a complete whack job.'

"(NASCAR) tells me they're going to sit him down that 'his head' is out of control.

"I could talk to this concrete right here, and it would talk back more to me than he did. He is just a complete moron."

So, Denny, what do you think about Brad Keselowski now?

"For sure, I think that Brad is one of the best racers out there at this point," Hamlin said Friday after qualifying third for Sunday's Sprint Cup race at Phoenix. "Not only from the speed that he has, but the ethics in which he races. He's a great guy to race with. Really to me, there's no resemblance from the Brad before to the Brad now."

Of all the quantum leaps Keselowski has made during his dizzying ascent to championship contender over the past year - becoming a versatile world-beater at virtually any track, honing his razor-sharp restarts, emerging as an influential leader of Penske Racing at the tender age of 28 - perhaps the most astounding is how he has ingratiated himself with his peers.

The "Bad Brad" moniker spawned by his famous altercations with veterans such as Hamlin and Carl Edwards doesn't seem nearly so fitting for the driver who will enter Sunday's AdvoCare 500 trailing Jimmie Johnson by seven points with two races remaining to decide the Chase for the Sprint Cup championship.

For Keselowski, who once said "in this sport when others are angry at you, generally you've done something right," it's been a nuanced change in his approach. He doesn't ruffle feathers nearly as often as he once did. But he also hasn't backed off on some of his bluster as the brash iconoclast who relishes challenging authority.

"It's about finding limits, pushing them, breaking them, expanding them and trying again, over and over again," he said. "It's that constant cycle and when that happens, it happens because you're not afraid. That's the only way you can get yourself to push those limits further. That's what makes an elite race car driver, someone who finds the boundary, crosses over it, comes back and finds a way to move it a little bit further and goes again and again and again. And that's my job."

There remain a few exceptions to the goodwill extended to Keselowski. Kyle Busch still isn't pleased about being spun from the lead at Watkins Glen International, and Tony Stewart said last week that Keselowski had a death wish.

Stewart's differences with Keselowski can be traced back as far as the fracas with Hamlin and Edwards. After angering Stewart with an aggressive move during a 2009 Cup race at Kansas Speedway, Keselowski laughed and said, "That's pretty damn awesome that Tony Stewart's mad at me, because I'm outracing him. I don't walk away from that angry or upset."

He giggled again Friday when told of Stewart's "death wish" assertion, which Keselowski said was "pretty funny" before giving a serious and insightful perspective on his racing worldview.

"To be an elite driver, you turn the fear off," he said. "You think about, 'What am I going to do to win the race today? What chances have I got to take?' And that's how I proceed. And when that moment comes when I raise a little flag internally and say 'Whoa, this is scary, I don't know,' I'm not going to be a great race car driver.

"To some degree, everybody who gets in a race car and decides to try to make a living out of driving a car as fast as possible has a little bit of a death wish, but I don't feel like I have any more than anyone else."

Equality is one of the appealing parts of driving car for Keselowski.

"My favorite thing about a race car - I weigh 155, 160 pounds, and my dad told me early in my career that I probably wasn't going to be a really good football player," he said. "But when you get in a race car, you don't have any of those disadvantages. I don't have to worry about fighting a 300-pound lineman or taking a hit from a linebacker that weighs 280 and can run faster than I can.

"When I get in that car, I'm the same size as everyone else, and it comes down to what level of heart you have and what mental preparation you have to hang it all out there. And that's part of what makes racing so special and also part of what makes it so difficult."

Keselowski's gumption at Texas Motor Speedway impressed Johnson without leaving the five-time champion as irritated as he might have been in the past.

Though he complained about Keselowski jumping a few late restarts during the race, Johnson had no lingering resentment after outdueling Keselowski in a fender-banging victory.

"He was extremely aggressive and had that mind-set of going for broke, but we all evolve as drivers, and I think he was more in control of his vehicle (at Texas) than he was when he was new to the sport," Johnson said.

Keselowski delivered a handshake to Johnson in victory lane.

"I have a tremendous amount of respect for him, but I still want to beat him with every inch of my body," Keselowski said. "There's a difference between respect and laying over for someone. I'm going to push him as hard as I can, and if he does win it, which I don't plan on letting that happen, he's going to look back at this time period and say he never fought any harder than he had to fight me."

Johnson figures to be tested Sunday at Phoenix. He will be starting 24th - his third-worst qualifying effort of the season. Keselowski, who will start 14th, bested Johnson in both practices Saturday.

The ongoing battle between Keselowski's No. 2 Dodge and Johnson's No. 48 Chevrolet has been a recurring theme in the Chase since they finished 1-2 in the opener at Chicagoland Speedway. Despite winning from the pole position the past two weeks, Johnson hasn't been able to shake his rival.

It's reminiscent of the 2007 title fight between Hendrick Motorsports teammates Johnson and Jeff Gordon, who finished second in points despite a record 30 top-10 finishes.

"That reminds me the most of what I'm dealing with now," said Johnson, who capped a streak of four consecutive wins at Phoenix that season to help sew up the title. "I expect for Brad to be strong here. I would assume that we would be right there running nose to tail once again when the checkered flag falls."

If that scenario does unfold, Johnson is expecting Keselowski to exercise the same restraint he showed at Texas in not wrecking a rival for a win.

"It never crossed my mind that he would make an intentional move to dump me," Johnson said. "There are only a few people out there wired like that. I just don't think there are many guys out there that would haul off into the turn and just dump their competition for the championship."

Said Keselowski: "Jimmie has never done anything to me to deserve to be raced in that manner. When I race people, I race them off of a code (of) how they've started racing me. Jimmie has never really put me in a spot where I had to enforce or stand my ground from a perspective of being pushed around. I'm not in the habit of just wrecking people just to wreck them."